«Perhaps you could show him around,» I suggested to Lillian.
Her eyes opened wider still; Lillian's eyes had the gift of being infinitely expandable. «Would you like me to show you around?» she asked Hezekiah.
«I'd love for you to show me around,» he answered.
«Then it's settled,» I said. Drawing Lillian aside, I whispered, «Hezekiah went through a terrible ordeal this afternoon, and it would do him good to forget about the experience for a while. Can you make sure he doesn't dwell on what happened? Don't let him start talking about it, to you or anyone else. Keep his mind on other things.»
«I can keep his mind on other things,» she promised with those wide open eyes of hers. Turning back to Hezekiah, she slipped her arm around his waist and snuggled in close to him. «What do you want to see first?» she asked. «There's so much we can do.»
Trying not to chuckle, I headed off to Lady Erin's offices. Hezekiah would never know what hit him.
* * *
The factol's suite was tucked into the most inaccessible part of the Festhall, guarded by one of those irascible old men who never goes anywhere, yet seems to know everything. You know the type: think of that local tavern owner who never strays farther than the wine cellar… but if you witness some duel in the streets and race around to tell the news, he already knows the details, he can explain what started the quarrel in the first place, and he even tells you the prognosis from the surgeon attending the wounded.
Lady Erin's steward, TeeMorgan, was like that. He was a bariaur – much like a centaur, but from the chest down he looked more like a ram than a horse, and he had curled ram's horns sprouting from his forehead. «So,» he said the moment he caught sight of me, «you were in the middle of that fiasco in the Courts today. You and that Clueless boy. Have you thrown him down a privy or what?»
«Lillian has taken him under her wing,» I answered. «Do you have any food handy? I haven't eaten since lunch.»
«Hmph,» he grumped. «Seems to me if a Sensate wants to experience everything in life, starvation is one of the first things on the list.»
«I fasted for a month and a half the year I turned twenty-five,» I told him.
«And the paintings you did then were your only ones worth looking at,» he retorted. «All these portraits and landscapes and still-lifes of yours… whatever happened to good old abstraction? Painting what you feel instead of what you see – that's what I call art. Where's the point of painting a bowl of grapes that just looks like a bowl of grapes? But put little screaming faces on each grape, and that's a statement.»
«I wouldn't mind some grapes right about now,» I said.
«Yeah, try to change the subject. But take your portrait of Factol Sarin hanging in the City Barracks… my four-year-old could understand it. You call that art?»
«I call it my job. People pay me to paint pictures that look like pictures, TeeMorgan. They don't come to me for statements, they come for grapes you can recognize as grapes. Judging by the amount of gold they're willing to pay, they're happy with what they get.»
«Oh yes, gold,» TeeMorgan growled. «You're a Sensate, Cavendish – you should acquire a taste for more than one mineral. What would your father think of a son who was content to be a mediocrity?»
I caught my breath and bit back true anger. TeeMorgan and I frequently had these jousting matches about art, but mentioning my father was going too far. The look on my face must have told the bariaur he'd entered forbidden territory, because he turned away and made a gruff noise in his throat. «Pike all this arguing,» he said. «I'll check what we've got in the pantry.»
His hoofs clacked loudly as he cantered into a back room; and I was left alone with thoughts of my father.
My father, Niles Cavendish, was a hero: a champion swordsman, a dashing adventurer, a savior of the downtrodden. A city like Sigil never lacks for heroes, of course – every night in every tavern, you'll hear some berk boasting how he slew the Five-Headed Monster of Whatsit or retrieved the Gold Talisman of Who-Cares. But Niles Cavendish was a real hero, a hero known for his exploits throughout the multiverse… ready to rush into the Abyss to rescue a kidnapped princess, or dive into the River Styx to save a drowning puppy.
Twelve years had passed since he disappeared, and I still couldn't think about him without clenching my hands into fists.
TeeMorgan stuck his head in from the pantry doorway. «We got some cold beef left over from dinner, and a new delicacy called swineberries. I assume you want some?»
«Beef yes, berries no.»
«And you call yourself a Sensate,» TeeMorgan muttered. He stomped off to get me a plate.
* * *
Lady Erin arrived just as a nearby clock chimed six in the morning. I had been dozing lightly on a couch in her office, an exotic piece of furniture upholstered with a hide I suspected had once been attached to a basilisk.
«Don't be gettin' up,» she said as she bustled in and threw a stack of papers onto her desk. «I've only a few words to say, then I'll let you get back to sleep. You'll need all the rest you can get.»
«May I ask why, my lady?»
«Special duty in the service of our faction,» she replied. «I've convinced the other factols someone's systematically attacking all our faction headquarters. Naturally, it's too much to expect that we band together against a common foe…» She threw a rueful glance over her shoulder in the general direction of the Hall of Speakers. "But we've worked out a tiny cooperative effort.
«Each faction,» she went on, «will protect its headquarters however it sees fit. Here at the Festhall, we'll have to hire mercenaries, and won't that add to the cheery atmosphere? But that's not your problem. The council also agreed to assemble cross-factional teams of observers outside each headquarters – not helpin' with protection but watchin' for suspicious activities. If an attack or disaster takes place, the teams are forbidden to involve themselves; we don't want them gettin' distracted by a showy diversion. Observer teams'll hold back and look smaller things… like a githyanki and githzerai runnin' out the back door of the building.»
«I assume you want me on one of these teams?» I said.
«Exactly,» she nodded. «You have a keen eye, and you've seen the thieves. That's an advantage I don't want to waste. Also, I understand you can take care of yourself if it comes to a fight… right?»
She smiled at me as if that were a joke – as if we both knew that the son of Niles Cavendish had to be a formidable warrior. Surely my father taught me all his fighting tricks.
No. He taught me nothing.
For months, sometimes years at a time, the legendary adventurer simply wasn't home: off swashbuckling through the multiverse, leaving my mother and me to struggle through on our own. When he came home his pockets were full of gold; but after a brief splurge of gift-giving, he would spend the rest of his purse on equipment for his next foray, leaving us alone again with nothing. Yes, I did learn to use the rapier, but not from my father. I learned my skills, such as they are, from dearly hired swordmasters – in my youth, because I thought learning the sword would impress my father if he ever took the time to notice, then later because so many brash young bashers believed they could make their reputations by challenging a Cavendish.
On the eve of my twentieth birthday, the survivors of my father's last expedition brought his rapier back and told us he was «lost»… not killed for certain, just lost. Vanished without a trace, one night in the Outlands. And even though we knew he had to be dead, my mother and I still couldn't shake off the slim hope he might one day show up on the doorstep, smiling, charming, full of stories. Year after year we hoped; until now, after twelve years, hope had become a tired thing that only occasionally returned to torment us, when a stranger's voice or walk suddenly brought to mind the great flamboyant Niles.
Lost is worse than dead. But I had my father's rapier, and yes, I did know how to fight.
«I can protect myself,» I told Lady Erin. «If it comes to that.»
«We hope it doesn't,» she nodded. «If you catch sight of those thieves again, don't go tryin' anything brave; just follow them back to their base of operations. Once we know where they are… well, this group has killed people from four different factions, so we'll have no problem findin' volunteers to rip the berks to pieces.»
«How much do the other factions know?» I asked. «Did you tell them the attack at the court building was just a diversion for the theft?»
Lady Erin shook her head. «I didn't want to give away the dark in an open meeting. Not that I think any factol is behind this, but some of those berks have notoriously loose lips. They've agreed the observation teams should track suspicious persons, and that's enough. We'll make sure each team has a Sensate, Guvner, or Harmonium guard who knows the chant and is watchin' for the right things.»
«So there won't be someone from each faction on every team?»
«Heaven forbid!» she laughed grimly. «I'm aimin' for five or six people per team. With so much distrust between factions, it'll be hard enough to get a half dozen sods to work together without comin' to blows; representin' all fifteen factions would make the job impossible. I have firsthand experience – I've just come from a meetin' of all fifteen factions.» She gave a rueful grin.
«So these teams…» I said. «You'll want us watching twenty-four hours a day?»
She nodded. «Each faction'll set up an observation post for you, somewhere with a good close view of the headquarters building. Runners'll bring you regular meals – on the sly, of course, so the enemy doesn't notice. It'll be up to the teams to decide who sleeps when, but there should be at least two people peelin' an eye for trouble at all times.»
«And we keep watching until something happens.»
«You keep watchin' until you have to stop.» Lady Erin walked around to the well-padded chair behind her desk, and slumped into it wearily. «Joint efforts between factions never last long, Britlin. Minor differences become major squabbles, arguments become brawls, and eventually you get duels, fights, puttin' each other in the dead-book… the factols all promise to pick their most 'tolerant' people, but still I'd guess we have three days tops before the operation falls apart. If even one team gets out of hand, it'll spike our try at secrecy and the enemy'll know what we're up to. So,» she said, «you keep watching till you or some other team blows the dark. After that, there's no point.»
Three days. Three days out of my schedule, with the deadline for Guvner Hashkar's commission coming up. Since the first painting had burned in the fire, I'd have to start again from scratch… but then, if Guvner Hashkar wanted a picture of the rotunda as it looked now, I could just smear black paint all over the canvas. There was a statement for you.
Anyway, I had no choice – a man doesn't refuse a special assignment from his factol. In the morning, I'd ask Lady Erin to send a note to Hashkar, regretfully stating he'd have to find some other wedding present for his wife's cousin.
There was, however, one more matter that had to be handled tonight. «What about Hezekiah?» I asked. «We can't let him rattle his bone-box all around the city if we're trying to keep this business dark.»
«I've been thinkin' about that,» Lady Erin answered, «and it strikes me it's high time Outsiders were allowed to play a more active role in city politics. At the last census, they outnumbered every established faction in Sigil… includin' the Chaosmen who all filled out five census forms apiece. Such a hefty number of folks deserve representation in some way; and postin' Hezekiah to an observation team strikes me as the perfect first step.»
I winced. «Whose team did you have in mind?»
The factol just smiled.
3. THREE DAYS WITH THE DEAD
The sky had begun to brighten when I let myself into Cavendish Case – a two-storey flagstone house only a few blocks from the Festhall. My father had bought this place the day I was born, as he never tired of telling me: one of the few topics of conversation between us that didn't dwindle into awkward silence.
I had intended to slip inside quietly, pick up some things I would need for the next few days, then slip out again. Of course, I'd leave my mother a note explaining that I'd be gone for a while… and of course, I wouldn't tell her the truth. Something like, «Urgent commission for the Modron Ambassador – must stay at Mechanus embassy till finished.» That would please her and avoid the unpleasantness of lying to her face…
…except that she was standing in the front hall as I slunk inside.
«And did we make a special friend last night?» she asked sweetly.
«No, Mother.»
«Britlin,» she said, «a gentleman's only civilized excuse for staying out till dawn is if he spent the night with a lady. All other alternatives are dclass.»
«Yes, Mother.»
She gave me a winsome smile – Mother had somehow convinced herself I was accumulating a long string of romantic conquests. The truth was much more restrained: yes, there had been a handful of women (and one or two of those had been quite a handful!) but I was no dashing rake with my head on a different pillow every night. Some Sensates strive for quantity and others for quality; I preferred the second approach.
«And what is the news on the street today?» she asked, a question that came up every morning. I rattled off juicy tidbits of rumor about the high and mighty – who was sleeping with whom, who had gone bankrupt in the latest financial scandal, whose souls had been collected overnight by baatezu calling in contractual obligations – a grab-bag of gossip related to me by TeeMorgan when he brought me breakfast at the Festhall. Mother had never met any of the people I talked about, but she nodded knowingly at each blunder and impropriety. The names were unimportant; she simply loved to hear about folly.
She loved to sing about it too. My mother Anne wasn't exactly a bard – she never played for anyone outside the family – but she wrote witty little songs that were then bought by practicing bards from every ward of Sigil. Although Mother didn't know it, the performers always presented the songs as «classical tunes, written in days long past»… mostly to explain why the verses were written in such courtly language. My mother, in songs as in life, genteelly avoided the slang of the street.
It was a strange occupation for a woman born the daughter of a duke; but then, she had long ago abandoned her heritage, and good riddance to it. Her father Urbin, Duke of Aquilune on some petty Prime world, had been a brutal man, a bully who beat his wife to death and then moved on to his daughter. Anne suffered untold agonies at his hands – untold to me, anyway – but tiny hints over the years suggested Urbin had raped her on numerous occasions, loaned her to his friends for sport, and degraded her in every conceivable way… all of this beginning when she was about eight years old and continuing till the time she turned sixteen.
On the very day of Anne's sixteenth birthday, a young swordsman named Niles Cavendish arrived at Duke Urbin's castle. Bitter though I was at my father for never being home, I could never truly hate him: in the first heroic act of his excessively heroic career, Niles Cavendish had proved himself a saint by saving Anne from her misery. As a child, I believed he had actually killed my wicked grandfather… but the Niles of that day was not such a legendary warrior that he could single-handedly slay a well-guarded duke in the heart of his castle. Niles saved Anne by marrying her, then bringing her back to his hometown of Sigil; and if he won Urbin's permission to wed by holding a rapier to the old berk's throat, neither of my parents would say.
So how does a woman leave behind such a hellish childhood to become a writer of comic songs? One day at a time. It helped that I was born shortly after she arrived in Sigil – taking care of a baby occupied so much of her attention, she had no time for ugly memories. It helped that my father was constantly away adventuring: she could concentrate entirely on her child, without having to coddle a husband too. Sometimes to quiet me, she played the harpsichord my father gave her as a wedding gift; and in time, she began to write little songs to greet him when he finally came home… songs that my father encouraged her to write down, songs that he showed to his bard friends who said they were worth money…
A happy ending, some would say. Some who had never seen the scar down my mother's cheek, made by a drunken uncle who wanted to test a new dagger. Some who had never seen the empty eyesocket that she refused to explain. Some who didn't know that in the thirty-two years she'd lived in Sigil, Anne Cavendish had never stepped outside the house or seen another face besides my father and me. Before I was old enough to do the shopping, delivery boys dropped food into a chute out front and Mother shoved their payment through a slot in the door. Even when she began to sell her songs, she couldn't bear to meet customers – one of Father's friends acted as her agent, picking up sheet music left on the front stoop and sliding the proceeds under the door.
In short, Mother laughed, she told jokes, she was utterly charming… but even I couldn't venture too close without making her flinch.
We blew each other a lot of kisses.
«I should tell you,» I said when I finally ran out of gossip, «I won't be around for a few days. Maybe as long as a week.»
«Good for you, Britlin!» she beamed. «Whoever you met last night must be ravenous for more.»
«It's not a woman, Mother…»
«A man then? I'm broadminded. Is he cute?»
«It's… an assignment. A painting assignment.»
«I see: painting.» She said it with a sly wink, as if she knew that couldn't possibly be the truth.
Sometimes, I had to reflect how lucky I was my mother never got out of the house. Otherwise, she'd bring home a different woman to meet me every night, desperately wanting her son to be showered with constant, all-consuming adoration. I was her substitute, a stand-in who might find the kind of passion she dreamed of: not Duke Urbin's bestial lust; not my own father's heroic pity; «a soul-completing love, a mutual cherishment to make weak hearts brave.»
That last bit was from one of her songs.
«I have to pack some things,» I told her.
«By all means,» she replied. «A gentleman always takes appropriate precautions.»
I laughed and shook my head. Some days, my mother had an unshakably one-track mind. As I began to climb the stairs, she called after me, «Wear the brown jacket, dear, and those nice black pants. They make you look so handsome, your lady will peel off your clothes with her teeth.»
* * *
When I returned to the Festhall, I was wearing my father's best rapier, and carrying a sketchbook to while away my off-hours for the next few days. Just inside the door, a factotum gave me a note from Lillian (every word a different color), saying I could find Hezekiah in an inn called She Who Sings the Sky. The place was just down Crystal Dew Lane and it had a good reputation – more expensive than most but the price bought you a good night's sleep without interruption by cracksmen or body-baggers. The next time I saw Lillian I'd have to congratulate her for ensuring the boy's safety.
By the time I got to the inn, Hezekiah was awake and seated at the breakfast table, munching through a stack of Outland pancakes as tall as the Great Foundry's chimney. For a moment I worried he might have spilled some secrets to the other patrons eating there; but the long-suffering woman cooking the pancakes said he had talked about nothing but Lillian and the Festhall.
Indeed, that's all he spoke of the whole time he was finishing his meal. Lillian did this, Lillian said that; and had I ever gone dancing along the Walk of Worlds? (Hezekiah, I designed one of the chambers along the walk – the room depicting Pelion, a layer of Arborea. To prepare for the commission, I spent three months in Pelion, slogging my way through an infinite expanse of white sand, all the time muttering to myself, «How in The Lady's name can I create a romantic little bower based on nothing but desert?» Still, a sphinx here, a pyramid there, and a few ruins crumbling by candlelight did the trick… not to mention the clever touch of posting signs that said PLEASE REMOVE ALL FOOTWEAR. Few couples can dance barefoot through soft warm sand without longing to disappear together behind the nearest dune.)
Thus I listened to Hezekiah enthuse about my work as we left the inn and walked out into the street. It was a drizzly day in Sigil, with raindrops so dainty you could ignore them until you were soaked to the bone. On the streets around us, most people carried umbrellas and wore irritable expressions that grew more sullen as the rain continued; but I and the other Sensates we passed had our faces open to the wet, grinning as water streamed down our cheeks. There's an especially delightful moment when a big droplet trickles down the back of your neck, so cold it makes you squirm… yet it seems that Sensates are the only ones who appreciate the experience.
Although our destination was almost diametrically across the hub from the Festhall, we made the trip in well under an hour thanks to Hezekiah's never-ending supply of gold: he simply hired a hippogriff hansom to fly us straight across the ring. For once, the boy showed some common sense – we both spent the entire trip with our heads stuck out the windows of the cab, lapping at the brownish rainwater and enthusing over how far down it was to the ground. Whenever one of us shouted, «Look at that!» the hippogriffs all gave fierce eagle-like screeches… which either meant, «Yes, isn't it interesting?» or «Pipe down, you sodding berks.»
You never can tell with hippogriffs.
* * *
In time, the cab set us down beside Ragpickers Square, in the looming shadow of our destination – Sigil's Mortuary, headquarters to the Dustmen. Historians claim that five hundred years ago, the Mortuary was nothing more than a massive granite dome, shaped like a beehive; but since that time the Dustmen have expanded and embellished, adding side towers and outbuildings, plus a frenzy of ornamentation around the dome itself. Now there are bat-winged gargoyles mounted in a circle around the peak, and trellises of razorvine growing up the walls; now, the front entrance is flanked by giant frescoes depicting all the Death Deities of the multiverse; and now the crowning glory above the entrance is a stained glass window, two storeys tall, fifty feet wide. Every pane of glass in that window is a subtly different shade of black.
«Wow!» said Hezekiah. «What a great-looking place! I bet it's spooky at night. Do they give tours?»
«No,» I answered, «they give funerals.»
Although it was still before peak, several mourning parties stood queued outside the main door, suggesting that the dozen ceremony rooms inside were already occupied. I wondered how many of the corpses lined up for the final send-off were victims of the massacre at the Courts yesterday. No way to tell. Each corpse would be taken inside, prepared according to whatever rituals were desired by the next of kin, and finally launched through portals into other planes of the multiverse – to a heaven or a hell if the deceased had shown a preference during life, or maybe just to the Elemental Plane of Fire for instant cremation.
«Excuse me, honored sir,» said a voice by my side.
«Would you have the privilege to be Britlin Cavendish?»
I turned to see a sallow-faced gnome kowtowing in the vicinity of my ankles. He wore a shapeless gray robe that was much too long for him; probably, it had been tailored for a short human, which meant that fully half of it piled up in folds around his three-foot-tall frame. The collar of his robe bore a tiny embroidered skull in the faded yellow and orange colors of the Dustmen.
«Yes,» I replied, «I'm Britlin Cavendish. And this is my… this is Hezekiah Virtue.»
«An honor, an honor,» the gnome said, taking Hezekiah's hand in both of his own and squeezing repeatedly. «You may call me Wheezle – everybody does. If I ever had another name, I've forgotten it by now.»
He gave a little laugh as if we should take this as a joke. For politeness' sake I smiled, but his attitude didn't fool me. Gnomes in Sigil place great stock on their names, and most of them take pride in introducing themselves at length, complete with genealogies and incomprehensible honorifics: «I have the privilege to be Quando-Master Spurrit Vellosheen Legrunner, eldest son of Jance-Leader Vellosheen Spurrit Legrunner, late of the Order of the Vole, but recently advanced to the House of Frequent Bubbles, twice enwreathed.» If you meet a gnome who only gives a nickname, he's either a criminal concealing his identity or a wizard whose magic would be jeopardized by speaking his name aloud.
«What can we do for you, Wheezle?» I asked.
«No, honored Cavendish, it is what I can do for you,» he replied. «My superiors instructed me to watch for you and escort you to… a place nearby.»
«A place we can keep an eye on the entrance to the Mortuary?»
«Indeed. If you would walk this way?»
He gestured toward a tenement building across the street… although calling it a building perhaps too generous. It looked more like a rickety piece of wooden sculpture, constructed by an untalented art student who needed lessons in carpentry. The only things propping it up were a line of equally seedy tenements on either side, leaning inward so the building in the middle had nowhere to fall. Further structural reinforcement was added by ample quantities of razorvine that twined up the front face of the building in a solid sheet of thorns.
«You want us to go in there?» I asked.
«It is an excellent location,» Wheezle answered. «As you can see, its height gives it a superlative view; from the seventh floor, you can observe the front entrance of the Mortuary and much of the back. Even better, the building has no tenants right now.»
«That's because it's going to collapse any second!»
«Factol Skall guarantees its structure is fundamentally sound,» Wheezle said. «At least for a few days.»
«It looks fine to me,» Hezekiah chipped in. «Come on, Britlin, this will be fun.»
Reluctantly, I followed the two of them toward the tenement. Whether or not it was structurally sound, the building was made from very old wood – the kind that would blaze like straw if our flame-happy enemies pluffed it with a fireball. Silently, I whispered a prayer to The Lady of Pain that the drizzle would keep falling until the wood became too wet to burn.
* * *
The design of the tenement was simple: two single-room apartments on each floor, and a wobbly staircase up the middle. Judging by the smell of the lobby, every apartment had once housed a minimum of five weak-bladdered cats.
The doors of both ground-floor apartments were missing. So were the windows. Rain pattered in from the outside, and ran across the badly slanted floors to pool up in the corners. In spite of myself, I began to look forward to a few days in the place – I had never stayed in such a decrepit building before. If I was lucky, it would even have rats.
The stairs creaked loudly as we started up to the higher floors. Wheezle tried to put this in a positive light. «As you can tell, your honors, we need not fear enemies creeping silently up from below.»
«We?» I asked. «You'll be watching with us?»
«Factol Skall deemed it helpful for one of our faction to join you,» the gnome answered. «In case you had any questions about our ways.» Which meant that Factol Skall wanted his own man planted in our party, to spy on us and report any undesirable activities. No doubt every other faction in the city was doing the same thing.
We climbed all the way to the top, constantly brushing away the filmy cling of spider webs. The stairs teetered under our weight and I made a point of staggering my footsteps not to match Hezekiah and Wheezle – if we all walked in pace, we might give the staircase a timed wobble that would bring the whole thing crashing down. It didn't help that the top flight of steps was slick with water, dribbling in through dozens of holes in the roof. Much as the seventh floor afforded the best view of the Mortuary, I suspected the team would prefer to set lookouts on the sixth or even fifth floor… somewhere the rain couldn't penetrate so easily.
Then again, when we reached the seventh floor, another member of our party was already there, enduring the leaky roof with no noticeable discomfort: Guvner Oonah DeVail, our brief acquaintance from the Courts. She had brought a folding canvas chair with her, and now sat a short distance back from the window, peering out into the street. Her silver-wired staff leaned up against the wall within easy grabbing distance.
«Fine morning, isn't it?» she asked. She had managed to place her chair out of the direct line of any of the leaks, but her olive green bush-hat was still sodden with rain. «How are you two feeling?»
«Quite well, your honor,» I bowed.
«Bar that nonsense!» she snapped. «I'm on official leave from the court bench, so you can skip the flowery titles. My name is Oonah, got it? Oonah.»
«Hezekiah Virtue,» my companion said, scuttling forward and holding out his hand. Whatever Prime backwater the boy came from, they were certainly big on handshakes. But DeVail was happy to reciprocate, grabbing Hezekiah's hand and pumping it heartily.
